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 Looper opened the inning with a single to center and then with the Cardinals up 8-3 bunted for another hit. Miles followed Looper twice with singles, the latter driving in a run.
The streak was broken when David Eckstein hit a sacrifice fly and So Taguchi ended the inning by grounding into a double play.
Scott Rolen's three-run homer was the biggest hit, putting St. Louis ahead 7-3 and chasing starter David Wells. Mike Thompson entered, and Ryan Ludwick homered on his first pitch.
The Cardinals ended a five-game losing streak during which they were outscored 41-11 by lower-rung Pittsburgh and Washington.
St. Louis had mustered four hits off Wells (5-8) in four scoreless innings before the fifth, when they tied a season best for runs in an inning.
The 44-year-old Wells is 0-3 with a 14.33 ERA in his last four starts, the longest of the bunch lasting 5 1-3 innings. The Padres lost a four-game winning streak, one off their season best, and fell two games behind idle Arizona in the NL West.
Adrian Gonzalez, Geoff Blum and Khalil Greene homered for the Padres, who outscored the opposition 23-9 during the winning streak.
Looper (9-9) won for only the third time in 11 starts despite allowing all three long balls. He was charged with four runs and six hits in 6 1-3 innings, including Blum's two-run drive in the top of the fifth that made it 3-0.
Looper, who began the game batting .161 with five RBIs, was in the eighth spot in the lineup, a ploy manager Tony La Russa has used the last three games in an effort to spark the sagging defending World Series champions. He first tried it in 1998 during Mark McGwire's then-record 70-homer season, reasoning that it would give the Cardinals a pair of leadoff hitters after the first time through the order and thus raise the odds of McGwire seeing better pitches to hit.
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Before the Cardinals batted Joel Pineiro eighth on Saturday at Washington, no one in the major leagues had tried it since 2005 when the Marlins' Dontrelle Willis hit seventh twice and eighth twice in his final four starts of the season.
The Cardinals lost the previous two games with the pitcher batting eighth this year, although pitcher Adam Wainwright homered on Sunday and Adam Kennedy, the ninth-place hitter on Sunday, also homered.
Notes: The Cardinals are among many teams with 10 consecutive hits, doing it in 1920 and 1922. ... The game was played with a three-man crew after Marty Foster became ill, a day after he was drilled by a foul ball in the facemask. The game
time temperature was 96 degrees. ... The Padres are 11-13 since the All-Star break. ... Wells entered the game 4-1 with a 2.08 ERA against the Cardinals in five starts but faced them for the first time since June 8, 2005, in St. Louis. ... The Cardinals also scored 10 runs in the fifth inning June 16 at Oakland. ... The 10-run inning was the most against the Padres since they gave up 11 in a 15-5 loss at St. Louis on May 8, 2005.
[Associated Press;
by R.B. Fallstrom]
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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